The writer/director Richard Brooks took a shot at criticizing the modern news media in this very uneven film to put it mildly. Sean Connery is the roving celebrity journalist with a mobile camera in one hand ready to report or make the news where he travels. The plot is set in motion when 2 suitcase size atom bombs are stolen and the terrorists responsible threaten to blow up New York City with them.
The film certainly has an impressive cast. Besides Connery there's Katherine Ross, George Grizzard, Leslie Nielsen, John Saxon, Hardy Kruger, Robert Webber and cult movie favorite Henry Silva. All these actors play exaggerated characters in the political and television world. Brooks seems to be saying that governments don't control things only the media as if this is some big insight.
This would be satire wants to be like the film Network but Brooks has written a script that's incoherent and confusing at times. Still for a film that came out in 1982 it's unusually prescient about the state of reported news and how it interacts with the world. Besides any film that has Sean Connery ripping off his toupee at the end of the film can't be all bad.
The film runs 117 minutes
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